 Good evening, everybody. I'm so pleased to see everybody who turned out tonight. We have a great group here. I'm Jean Noon. I'm president of Three Rivers Land Trust. And we're going to have a short program here to talk a little bit about what we do as a Land Trust and some of our projects. Our first speaker is Pat Smith, who's our botanist. And she is a former director and a former treasurer for the Land Trust. This Walnut Hill focus area, the state has a conservation action plan that identifies areas around the state that are of ecological significance. In Maine, Walnut Hill is one of those areas. The more or less circular area is the full Walnut Hill area. I'll read you a short description out of their write-up. This is due to the area having a forested expanse of rolling uplands interspersed with high density of streams, wetlands, vernal pools, and pocket swamps. Taken altogether, these various upland and wetland types create a wide diversity of plant and animal habitats. So that's why this area is considered of ecological significance. Within that area, this is the property that's called Walnut Hill 1. It's located on a road, which is Walnut Hill Road, which is actually a dirt road at the point of the property. It's about 88 acres in two parcels. And the former owner had planned to have a small subdivision on this property. But because of the large wetlands, which you can see near the bottom coming into the property, and across the road is another large wetland, putting a row of houses in between would break up these two major wetlands. So although he offered to sell the land trust the back lot, back portion of the lot, we convinced him that it would be better to sell us the entire lot. The land trust had never done this before in terms of purchasing. We've been focused on easements on farms and working for us up to that point. So it was a new experience. And we had to do a lot of research to find the grant funds to get this property. This is some of the plants that I found in the first few years of looking at this property. The final deed was signed in December of 2010. And a major portion of it was state funds for wetland preservation. And we received grants from the Open Space Institute and the Sage Foundation. These are some of the early springs. We started collecting data on the property even before the deed was signed. And besides my collecting data on the plants, Madge Davis has been collecting data on the birds that are out there. The last two years, the volunteers have been collecting data about a vernal pool on the property. This is not the only vernal pool that's out there, but it's a particularly significant one. These spring photos show when it's full and volunteers. This shows the data collected in the fall when the pool was empty. This pool is approximately 60 by 40 feet and almost five feet deep when it's full. So it's quite a large pool. This spring, we collected additional data and photos and submitted them to the Inland Fish and Wildlife to put this property, this particular pool, onto the state maps as a significant vernal pool. That affects the setbacks on the vernal pool. These are some of the things that were seen, the wood frog eggs. The middle one on the top is a fairy shrimp if you've never seen one. They're only about an inch long. And the very presence of that, which is only in a small portion of pools, makes this significant. Some of the other interesting species, these are some of the frogs that use the pool for breeding. You have the wood frog, the toad, the pickle frog and the spring peeper down in the bottom. And this is just a deer track that I photographed. It's important to preserve the woods next to the pool because these disperse in the summer into the woods. They don't stay at the pools. So you need not only the pool, but the surrounding woods for habitat. I also started photographing anything I saw that was interesting. So I've got here a few butterflies. And we were told there might be a red dragonfly in this area. So I've been trying to photograph dragonflies as well. And I haven't found the rare one yet. This is a summary of some of the history on the back lot. It doesn't appear now if you walk up there that it's been inhabited, but actually there is remains of foundation and matched it some research showing that this was occupied in the 1880s. And I listed some of the information she found in the tax records of the tax items that were taxed. So they raised peas or beans, Indian corn, potatoes. They had an orchid, they had animals, they had cows and other cattle. It's hard looking at it now to see that this was a farm, but there was a farm there. So it's kind of interesting to go in and see that. Also in the research, we found this one rare plant. This is a native orchid that's rare both federally and state. So it's really neat to find that and we're preserving the habitat that that lives in. And these I particularly like, these are called grape ferns. They're little small fern-like plants. And there's just so many little tiny ones. The one on the lower right there is barely an inch tall. So they often overlook this as small, but they indicate a fairly rich habitat. They grow in the same area with some of the rare plants. And a few more of my favorites. They just scattered around this. The one on the far right is also another native orchid relative. Not rare, but in the orchid group. We also have an area that has a beaver dam, which you can barely see down in the foreground that has created this pool near one of the trails. And there's a photograph of a porcupine. He was on a downed limb and he pretended we couldn't see him. We walked all around the tree and took pictures and he just froze right there. He figured if he didn't move, we couldn't see him. But we figured he was a young fellow. These are some of the ferns. Some of these were particularly emerging in the spring. That's a common bracken, a royal fern, probably a cinnamon. The one on the far right is called the stair step, which you could see the way the fronds come up. And the one on the lower right was growing out of a tree trunk, a hole in the tree trunk, which was kind of any, find myself, yeah. Oh, this was interesting. We invite, part of it is to have educational opportunities too, because this property being preserved, we invited the Mycological Association to come and have what they call a plurae, where they go out and collect and they bring it all back to the table. And it's a teaching opportunity, the teaching that beginners who have come, how to recognize different things. And you can see they got quite a good collection there of species, even though it was at a very dry time. So one of the opportunities is to have organized groups come out and use the property for educational purposes. So that's one of the advantages. And let's not forget the trees. Part of this is trees. The left one is an American basswood, which is like a slightly rich habitat. So you don't see that in all of our woods. In the middle is the Shagbark Hickory, which is limited to southern Maine. So it grows further south. It's not rare, but we don't see a lot of it. And then I have an emerging beach, the red maple, and below that the flowers. In the middle is an ash tree, which also likes a little bit richer habitat. And the birch, I just couldn't figure out why it grew the way it grew. It's just too interesting. And just a few more flowers. This is the last slide of flowers. That Solomon seal, the arching one there with the buds on it, was up in the foundation area where the old farms that was. And that's it. Lastly, thank you all for helping to preserve these very special places. Only with volunteers and donors is it possible to protect them now and into the future. So thank you. Our next speaker is Carl Davis. And he's speaking about another property that the Land Trust owns. Okay, this is the Hobbs Farm Project that the Land Trust had given to us in 2010. The shaded area is the property. I'll give you a little bit of history. Lester Hobbs and his son, John, found this probably from the 40s, 50s, 60s, doing row crops. Some of it went to the Boston Market and some they had a, well, their houses was here and they had a farm stand that I heard was known, you know, throughout the area. Lots of people used to go there. It's 30 acres of fields, about 130 acres of woods. It has 1,200 feet. There's a wetland down on the backside that's part of the main natural areas program for significant habitat and there's 1,200 feet down there. Through the years, how we ended up with it is that it sold several times and then a woman, Christine Arnold, took it back through foreclosure and approached the Land Trust. She wanted to donate this land to us and through that process, we eventually, we paid a little back taxes but we got this property. With the field land, we didn't have the capacity to deal with the field land at 30 acres of it so we leased it to this fellow as Nils Pearson, Maple Stone Farm up in Acton and he has a five year lease on the 30 acres. Probably 15 acres are right now are manageable to Hay. The other 15 need a lot of work. So anyway, Hay's 15 acres and he's working on, this is some of his hay from this year. He manages to get two crops off it. It's pretty fertile soil. It tends to be a little bit wet even though it's up on a high ridge but this is some of the work he's done. One of the fields you couldn't access very well. There was a really wet corridor down through it so he put in stone and got access to it. So he's doing lots of things to improve it and hopefully in five years we'll have 30 acres of productive field land. There was a well on the property that was under this building that was wide open when we bought it. It's probably seven or eight feet across was had no cover over it so the Maple Stone School in Acton built this little well house over it to protect that. When we bought it, you couldn't see that pond. It was just a mess of trees and a bit of root, multi-floor rows so the school cleared that all out and now you can actually see the farm pond. Does anybody know what we're looking at? What is it? Bittersweet, yes. This farm has a tremendous amount of multi-floor rows and bittersweet. That's our biggest challenge with this property is to get these plants under control. We tried a little bit last summer and it's gonna take quite an effort. It's not only in the fields when they did a cut probably 10 years ago it migrated into the woods. Probably I'd say at least a couple hundred feet and there's places I've been in there where there's a canopy of multi-flora that's probably 30 feet wide. Growing over the top of it is bittersweet probably up to 20, 25 feet so it's amazing what these invasions will do in our region. This one I'm gonna show a little bit. One of the things we're gonna do with this property is also some recreation. There will be a trail that we have started to lay out. I can point it out a little bit. If you come in here there'll be a little parking lot and then you'll go down the hedgerows. Right in here there's this old cemetery that has I think two revolutionary war veterans and one of them was Mr. Farnham who Farnham Hill was named for in Acton. So there's some work to do there to clean that up but the trail will go down. This section of the forest was never really cut hard so it'll go through that down to the wetland and look back up around. The students at Maplestone Farm are gonna work with us on that project. Getting from here to here is probably gonna take most of the work because this is the area that's full of the invasive species. This is the wetland. We've done a little bit of walking down there mainly we haven't done any research as Pat has done on the Walnut Hill project but eventually we'll get to that with this project. It's a significant wetland as I said and the May Natural Areas program will work with us on that once we get into getting some biologists in there and seeing what is actually in there. Pat can probably tell us what this flower is. Where's Pat? What is it? No? Okay. Well I had to throw one flower in Pat. So I don't know what it is but anyway it's on the property. This is one of the walks that we took down to the edge of the wetland in the summertime. That's Glenn Wiles looking things over. And this is a walk we took down there in the winter time which was really kind of nice because you could walk out on the wetland which was get a little better picture of what's down there and also you can see the tracks and who might be walking around. One of our walks, we measured this big wolf pine that was down in the woods. The property was cut 10 years ago. Most of it was cut pretty hard. They cut the good oak and the good pine. As far as the management plan, we've had one done on it. Everett Toll did a management plan. Mostly there'll be improvement cuts in time on this property. It'll be quite a few years before there's a lot of marketable timber on it. But there is, interestingly enough, when it was cut, it was done with mechanical harvesters and the grapple skitters. So the Twitch trails were probably 100 feet wide. Well when you walk in there now, the Twitch trails are just pines this high just thick all the way down through them. So it does have regeneration coming in and we'll keep having to thin that as time goes on. All right, I'm just gonna finish up a little. I was fortunate enough to go to one of our premier conservation lands in Maine, Baxter State Park, which was a vision of Percival-Vaxter, which is just amazing. I'm sure a lot of you have been there. I was there last week doing a little hiking. And anyway, I wanted to show a few quick slides of some of the, we ran into, so I had to see this is snow and ice up on the plateau. So winter is happening up there, but it was also some nice fall colors. That's a shot looking back towards the peak is back in the air. This we're walking down, this was kind of a funny story. I was with my brother and my brother, my son and his girlfriend. And she's been in Maine three years, never seen a moose. So she's razzin' and razzin' us. Well she was in the lead hiking and 25 feet in front of her, she hears some snorting going on. So she kind of stops and she didn't know what was going on. And then all of a sudden, right in front of this bull moose walks out. So it was perfect. Go ahead, what is it? Was I scared? She was pretty shook up. She was like this, you know, so. I was in the back, so I didn't have to be scared. She was in the front. Yeah. And that's a shot looking back towards the peak and the colors, so. And a little snow on the peaks. And just some of the foliage that was there. And it was nice that we were there four days. The day we were there in the morning, we had a little sun and the day we came out with a little sun and all the rest of the time it rained. So, anyway, back to the hugs. Thank you. And finally, John Bozak is gonna talk a little bit about his property. John is also one of our directors now and we're glad to have him on the board too. Thank you, Jean. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about our farm and how we decided to develop a conservation easement with the Three Rivers Land Trust. The farm's name is the Berry Best Farm. It's in Center Lebanon, just off Center Road. And we raise peaches, blueberries, and hay, this is the hayland. Blueberries here, blueberries way over there, peaches, peaches over here. And I think it all starts with developing a land ethic or a conservation ethic over time. And my wife, Christine, and I probably went about this in two different ways. Christine grew up on this farm, which was great. She helped her folks in their farm activities. At one time, this barn had about 6,000 laying hens, so she was involved in the poultry business. You can probably see the remnants of the track here. Her parents, for many years, were in the racing business, raising standard bred trotters and paces and raced throughout New England. And so Christine was involved in training and caring for the horses. So there used to be 16 or 17 horses at one time on the farm. When she went off to college, she initially started out as a poultry major, poultry science major. That didn't last a long time. Poultry business has sort of faded away. Eventually she became an animal science major and wound up with a master's degree in dairy cattle nutrition. So she has that background. And I think that, plus living on the farm, developed her conservation and land ethic. I'm from Suburbia. I grew up about 30 miles east of New York City and surrounded by other elements of Suburbia. However, I did join the Boy Scouts. I was a Boy Scout. I did a lot of camping. I did a lot of fishing. I did trapping. And so I did acquire a smidgen of feeling for land. When I went to college, I majored in forestry and worked summers in college in the Panhandle of Idaho a couple of years. And I worked on the White Mountain National Forest and I was hooked as a forester. And foresters and farmers have a lot in common, as you probably know. We're both involved in relatively long-term kinds of projects. We have to have a long-term outlook on dealing with mother nature. We're also subject to the whims of mother nature. So things happen like ice storms and hail and droughts and so on. So I think we learn to roll with mother nature's punches over time. So when we met in college, we melded our two land ethics together, you might say. And over time, after living in Oregon for a while, we moved back to the New England. And 15 years ago, we moved to the farm. And it was great for her because it was coming back home again. And we had always discussed between ourselves how we could ensure that our children who were interested in working with the land again, and our grandchildren, how could they continue to work with the pressures of development that are going on all around us? We had a blueberry customer by the name of Marjorie Blood. And Marjorie was the owner just down the roadways of Red Wing Farm. And she and her family had recently put their land into a conservation easement. And she recommended that we see Madge Baker. And so we did. This was back around 2008. And Madge Baker and Jean Noon came to visit us at the farm. And we've known Jean through the York County Farmers Network of which she's a member. And we've known each other for a bit. We quickly decided that this is the way we were gonna go. We were going to protect our land by transferring our development rights to the Three Rivers Land Trust. And we quickly went through the process. Several generations of agreements were written and revised. And in December of 2009, we settled the trust and it was recorded in Alfred. And we're extremely happy with the results of that process. We have two generations coming behind us that are interested in managing the land. I should also have mentioned earlier that the Colburn family, which is my wife's family, had an 80 acre general farm in West Lebanon Village starting back in the 1920s. So the Colburn family had been in town for a bit as farmers. So please come and visit us and see what a protected piece of land looks like. Thank you. Thank you, John. Next, Lee has a little advertisement here. Thanks, Jean. My name is Lee Burnett. I'm with a project that Three Rivers is involved in called Forest Works. And we're trying to protect large blocks of woods in York County. We have an event next month in Limington. One of the things land trusts are getting more interested in is actively managing their woods. Another word for logging. If you do it carefully, there are a lot of benefits. You can improve wildlife habitat. If you wanna see birds and animals on your property, if you do it carefully with the forester, you can improve the habitat for animals. You can also earn a little income. You can also maintain the protections around vernal pools, around wetlands. So anyway, this is something that a lot of land trusts are getting more interested in. The demonstration we're gonna be doing next month is in Limington. It's on property owned by Francis Small Heritage Trust, the neighboring land trust. And they're gonna demonstrate two different kinds of low impact logging operations. Some people were probably familiar with horse logging as an example of low impact logging. But that's not the only logging systems. There's now mechanized operations that have a very light footprint on the ground. And these are gonna be sort of side by side so people can come sort of compare the difference in what the impact is with the horse logging operation versus what's called a cut to length operation. So it's basically open to the public, open. I mean, if you own land and you're kind of curious about is it worth getting into doing some forestry, come, have a look, the operators will demonstrate and then they'll step down and be available for questions. So it's a real opportunity just if you're curious to come ask questions and see for yourself. So anyway, these are flyers that are available. And hopefully you'll be able to follow the direction. Oh, I'm sorry, October 26th. It's a Saturday. It's basically from nine in the morning to one in the afternoon. Come for as long as you want. It's just gonna be parking on the side of the road. We'll have to be careful about that. Anyway, so come if you can. Well, I guess that's about it.